When you install, what are the first packages you install? Should these be included in future versions?

Personally I always apt-get

openoffice
nano
a certain video player
an upgrade of amaroK - if one exists!
gtk2-engines-gtk-qt (Seems to make firefox look better, as well as several other programs)
nano
firestarter
kanotix-update-gui
vmplayer

on top of all the normal packages.

How about you?

jesseman

Titel: RE: Which packages can Verfasst am: 20.05.2006, 16:52 Uhr

Anmeldung: 01. Feb 2006
Beiträge: 37
Wohnort: Summerville, SC

I agree on:

nano
gtk2-engines-gtk-qt

But must add:

aterm
irssi
conky
lineak
sylpheed

horo

Titel: RE: Which packages can Verfasst am: 20.05.2006, 17:48 Uhr

Anmeldung: 17. Dez 2003
Beiträge: 700
Wohnort: Berlin

Hi,

my add-ons are synaptic, frozen-bubble, python-serial, gtk2-engines-gtk-qt and some packages from **censored**

Ciao Martin

_________________omnia vincit pecunia

h2

Titel: RE: Which packages can Verfasst am: 20.05.2006, 18:15 Uhr

Anmeldung: 12. Mar 2005
Beiträge: 1005

nano, first thing I install. Nano should absolutely be included in all distros as far as I'm concerned, expecting anyone to debug any issue requiring a dip into console mode with a text editor and vi is a fantasy, great as vi probably is, it doesn't help you to look at a totally blank screen with no indication whatsoever of what your next step is. Nano is very userfriendly, small, works great, and is fairly intuitive, most options are listed under text display, easy to use.

Of all the apps that kanotix comes with, this is the only one I can think of that really should be added to the install package, it's just too useful for too many users to be left out. Only decently expert users can deal with vi, I know I can't even remember the simplest commands when I open it, even though I've learned them a few times. Leave vi for expert users, and add nano for realworld users.

gtk2-engines-gtk-qt, I had massively huge problems with this, well known issues it turned out, with firefox, total crashes on desktop switching. If you have not installed this, don't. If you're lucky enough to have it work with firefox I'll assume you aren't using desktops very much, or that you're just plain lucky, or that the bugs have been fixed. I won't touch that product again for a long long time though.

I too have packages from **censored**. (Tried to make a donation. He replied that he didn't take donations, that he was doing it for fun. If the quality of his work is an indication of how much fun he's having, then he's a very happy guy!)

vi, vim, nano all have their advocates. I like mcedit. It's a package I can't live without. As a Java programmer, I use gcj, the GNU Java compiler, with kdevelop. gcj is better than jdk in my opinion, because I can compile Java code into native machine language. Sure, it's not as portable, but there are times when you're building something for yourself and portability isn't an issue. So, my "must have" packages are:

I also got rid of Java and installed qtorrent instead of Azureus (I know it's old, but I like the minimalistic interface and, since I only d/l Linux stuff, I don't need encryption or DHT).

h2

Titel:Verfasst am: 20.05.2006, 20:38 Uhr

Anmeldung: 12. Mar 2005
Beiträge: 1005

re nano, this is not a question of advocating or not. If you need a text editor and you can't boot into gui and you have still not connected to the internet so you can run apt, vi is not going to do 99% of any user out there any good at all, it's completley incomprehensible to new users, and older users like me, who would like to one day learn its ins and outs.

On the other hand, pretty much anyone can open, edit, and save a document in nano if so required to get something running. This is just user friendliness, useability, and so on, it has nothing to do with preferences, a new user would probably prefer, if stuck in console, non x, mode, to be able to do what he/she needs to do to fix the issues. vi will not help them achieve that, since first they'd have to dig up a tutorial to do anything at all with it. Not to say vi shouldn't be included, it should, for all the power users out there who know it and like it and can use it, but another one should also be included for the rest of the planet's users who have no clue at all what to do with a blank text editor interface.

If kanotix is going to have a gui installer, gui front ends for the update scripts etc, it escapes me what the logic is behind not having a useable console text editor.

Anyway, this is hard to get extreme linux power users to understand, but vi is just not a practical tool to use if you don't already know it, whereas nano can be used with basically no knowledge.

Anyway, hopefully kano will take some mercy on the non linux elite who use this great distro and include tiny little nano so we can all edit to our heart's content in console, livecd or not.

It doesn't have to be nano, could be any decently user friendly and intuitively laid out console editor, nano fits that though. I won't argue this point, since to me there is really no real reason to argue against giving users something they can actually use.

This isn't a criticism of vi, it's just noting that vi is just too hard to use for average users who need a quick fix edit in console.

h2,
mc is there already, mcedit should be userfriendly.
i looked at nano the first time today and could not do nothing, cause not even ^G would open help, as it should. i didnt look at it any further, cause i am ok with mc, but for a first timer in a console without x that would be a no go. maybe i just didnt take enough time or was just too stupid.
btw: fully agree on vi, would probably take a week to get into it halfway.

greetz
devil

_________________<<We are Xorg - resistance is futile - you will be axximilated>>

I can live with mcedit...was easy to figure out once I knew about it. I still prefer nano, though. As long as you know the ^ = <ctrl> key you are good to go, same as if in mcedit you know the number = function key of that number.

rich.bradshaw

Titel:Verfasst am: 20.05.2006, 21:43 Uhr

Anmeldung: 14. Jan 2006
Beiträge: 287

nano is quite easy, ctrl-q is quit, ctrl-w is write etc, its all at the bottom... ^ is control. I don't use it for anything too heavy, but editing config files is very easy in it - especially if you are not in X. vi is a bit weird, but I can see that if you can use it it is good...

Kano

Titel:Verfasst am: 20.05.2006, 21:50 Uhr

Anmeldung: 17. Dez 2003
Beiträge: 16613

I don't need to learn nano commands, these are from wordstar which also turbo pascal used. But i see no purpose to add 10 additional editors - everybody has his own editor. mcedit is the default editor of mc, which is installed (press f4 on a file). I know that most other distros do not preinstall mc, but as former DOS user it is essential...

hubi

Titel:Verfasst am: 20.05.2006, 22:00 Uhr

Anmeldung: 22. Jan 2006
Beiträge: 1296
Wohnort: Budapest

I support mc, it's essential help if you have to do something in the terminal, eg X is broken. On distributions without it (maybe it was Fedora) it was one of the first packages I installed.

hubi

_________________

h2

Titel:Verfasst am: 20.05.2006, 22:49 Uhr

Anmeldung: 12. Mar 2005
Beiträge: 1005

mcedit would be another example of a userfriendly console editor, I'd never seen that one, same idea though, list of commands on the bottom. Ok, I withdraw my nano inclusion request since mcedit fulfills the same role, it's immediately obvious how it works.

vi is cool, but to be honest, I've read tutorials, I've learned a few commands, but despite that, last week when I needed to edit something the very best I could do with it, having read that stuff in the past several times, was to remember that typing : then quit would get me out of it.

but that's neither here nor there, for those who can use it I'm sure it works very well.

Good to know about mcedit, I'd never even heard of that one, didn't realize it came with kanotix.

<heh heh, now I'm stuck in mcedit, can't get the number commands to work. I vote for nano with its always working ctrl + <letter> instead of mcedit, but that's a preference.

Hi!
I guess most Linux users have a favorit editor, and as long they are happy with it it is no much to discuss. But I think there is at least one very good reason to learn at least the basics of vi (or Vim), since Vi is the standrad editor in any Unix or Linux system. If you run into trouble in a Linux box which is not your own, or if you test a new dist, you can not rely on finding nano or emacs or any of the others by defaul.

Then, besides that, use whatever editor you like - but I really do not understand all this talk about Vi (or Vim) being so difficult and hard to learn. It is not intuitive, maybe, but wat is intuitive when it comes to edit config files or working in a shell anyway?? The confusing thing about Vim is the diffrent modes, but hey, it not THAT difficult to learns some basic stuff for basic editing. Then ofcourse there is a LOT to learn if you want to learn the details. But Hey, it is an anvanced editor, and advanced things normaly takes a little bit moore to learn.

Best Reagards

rich.bradshaw

Titel: Editors Verfasst am: 21.05.2006, 01:26 Uhr

Anmeldung: 14. Jan 2006
Beiträge: 287

Yeah, vi seems useful - and I agree, it's a standard.

As long as you know how to quit (:q) , save (:w), go in/out insert mode (i and esc) and the hjkl movement, you are probably ok for 90% of things...

Vi users - how often do you use the more advanced features, such as d3h or y10k and things like that?

Also, what does yank mean in context of vi?

michael7

Titel: vi tutorial Verfasst am: 21.05.2006, 03:04 Uhr

Anmeldung: 24. Mai 2005
Beiträge: 354
Wohnort: Nashville

Zitat:

As long as you know how to quit (:q) , save (:w), go in/out insert mode (i and esc) and the hjkl movement, you are probably ok for 90% of things...

yeah, I've learned those commands several times, but I can't remember them, they just don't stick in my head, I think because vi uses a logic that nothing else I use has, it's like its own world, that's my guess why it's so hard to get used to. Everything else I've used is pretty easy to understand.

My points re vi however were not to criticize it but just to point out that it's too obscure for most users out there. I've said to myself that I should learn it, but honestly I can't think of any reason to do that, I already know how to use a whole bunch of text editors, that's all I use for programming and coding, for years. To me it's something that really just seems to be obscure for the sake of being obscure, I mean, really, how hard is it to code in a list of common commands at the bottom of the screen? I know vi purists would say that you should learn it and not waste the screen space, but since that's not a philosophy any other product I use takes, it's not one I particularly agree with, it assumes that there is a real benefit to learning a different logic for every single program in existence, that's just not realistic as far as I'm concerned.

Anyway, I'm happy leaving vi to vi users, it's not a real issue to me, it's just an odd relic of unix from what I can see, from a time when there probably weren't very many programs or choices out there, but that's not the case today.

craig,
apt-listbugs will only puzzle new users. i used it for a while, but didnt find it very usefull.
i dont use it anymore and just dist-upgrade every day. the warnings we have on the news page are more usefull imho.

greetz
devil

_________________<<We are Xorg - resistance is futile - you will be axximilated>>

Hi again!
Yes, Vi (or Vim) can be tricky for a while untill you get used to it. I do not agree it is a relic however. Vi or Vim might be a little bit tricky, BUT when you have get used to it, you can work faster in Vim than in any other editor I have used. In fact - as long as I am not forced to use a word processor, I rather use Vim for any writing.

Nano is for sure an editor with enough capabilities for basic config editing or other basic editing needs, but compared to Vim (or Emacs) it DO miss a lot of the functions which can be handy when editing is getting advanced. And this is not an opinion but a fact. Then if the additional functions in Vim are needed in the specific case or for a specific personal need, that is another question. But for programing or "extended" system administration for example, in my opinion, forget about nano. Nano is a clone of pico, and pico was originally an editor for email purposes.

There is a new project, not mature yet, but planned to be ready for kde 4. The project is called Yzis, and its goal is to come up with a new Vi clone, very similar to Vim but not identical to Vim in every detail. Now, You could ask if the world really needs an new Vi clone, but the really new thing with Yzis, as I understand it, is that it will be possible to integrate it into KDE apps like Konquerror, Kdevelop, Quanta etc...and that will be great. (There is variant called Kvim allready, but it do not work very Well.)

bradshaw, since the power of Vim lies in its advanced functions, I use them a lot. It takes some time to learn, but when you have learnt them, you have a very powefull tool under your fingertips. However, my point in my previous above is: You don´t need to know a lot about Vim:s advanced functions to do some basic editing, and since Vim is the unix standard, I think it is a very good idea to learn the basic Vim commands.

About YANK:
Yank is more or less basically the same as copy and paste in a wordprocessor. Everything you delete with the commands d or dd OR copy with y (yank) or yy (yank lines) are copied into a register. If you do 5yy for example, you copy 5 lines. Or if you activate the visual mode and mark a word, and then do the Y (yank) you copy the marked word. You can also do for example 3y in normal mode, and then do for example a movement with the L key. This means you have copied the 3 letters from the corsor and to the right in the text. All these are called yank in Vim-language. Basically yank works in the same manner as d (delete) or dd (delet lines), but yank do not delete, just copy. Everything in the register can be copied back (or pasted) into a text with the commands p or P (put or Paste) p puts the text on the line after the promt, (capital) P just before the promt. I recommend some experimenting to figure out how yank work. It is not difficult.'

A simple y or yy copy the text into a nameless register. If you want to you can give names to registers. If you - in normal mode - do for example "x5yy, then you copy 5 lines into the register x. "xp then put the text from register x into the line after the cursor. (Observe, the command starts with the " sign. To avoid missunderstandings here, the "x5yy command in the example is NOT given at a : sign. You just leave insert mode with the Esc, and then type "x5yy in normal mode. Also observe you can not use captal letters for naming registers. You can have as many registers as the alfaphet allows.) Do you want to se what is in the register, then use the command :registers